The Denver Post reported gains in circulation over the past six months under new industry tracking standards that count subscribers to digital editions of the newspaper.
The Post said total circulation for the Sunday edition was up 10 percent and daily circulation rose 5 percent for the six months ending March 2011.
Statistics reported to the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that The Denver Post is the nation’s ninth largest Sunday newspaper, with average circulation of 519,838. Daily circulation of 324,970 makes The Post the 15th largest daily paper.
Until the new circulation reporting standards took effect six months ago, U.S. newspapers had recorded several years of declining print circulation as readers increasingly moved to online and digital editions.
“Every day, you hear critics saying newspapers are losing circulation,” said Bill Reynolds, The Post’s senior vice president of circulation. “But readers aren’t leaving The Denver Post — they’re just reading it in different formats.”
The new circulation report shows a 157 percent increase in consumers accessing The Sunday Post digitally on replica and non-replica editions.
Replica digital editions are exact representations of the print newspaper with pages showing articles and ads. Non-replica editions are formatted for delivery to mobile devices.
Daily digital editions showed a 73 percent increase.
Mobile website traffic from readers using iPhones, iPads, Android and BlackBerry devices reached an average of 4.9 million page views a month, up 96 percent compared to the previous six-month period.
Sunday and daily print circulation of The Post declined 3 percent compared to the prior six months.
Separately from the Audit Bureau of Circulations report, web tracker Omniture reported that average traffic to is up 6 percent with an average of 5.9 million unique visitors and 36 million page views per month.
has the largest local media online audience in metropolitan Denver, according to comScore.
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
